Computational Complexity and other fun stuff in math and computer science from Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Can Jerry Seinfeld crack P vs NP ?

The following is a quote from Comedian Jerry Seinfeld.
The source is
Seinfeld Universe: The Entire Domain
by Greg Gattuso (Publisher of Nothing: The Newsletter
for Seinfeld Fans, page 96.

I was great at Geometry. If I wanted to train someone as
a comedian, I would make them do lots of proofs. That's what
comedy is: a kind of bogus proof. You set up a fallacious premise
and then prove it with rigorous logic. It just makes people laugh.
You'll find that most of my stuff is based on that system ...
You must think rationally on a completely absurd plane.

I doubt that many comedians have seen lots of proofs
though they may have an intuitive sense of logic for their
routines. And not all comedians use this style.

I know of one theoretical computer scientist who is
a comedy writer.
Jeff Westbrook
got his PhD in 1989 with Robert Tarjan on Algorithms and Data Structures for
Dynamic Graph Algorithms. He was faculty at Yale, and then a researcher
at AT+T before working on the TV shows Futurama and The Simpsons.
I actually met him in 1989- he didn't seem that funny at the time.

Are there other theorists or mathematicians that are also professional
comedians or comedy writers? I doubt there are many.
If you define theorist or mathematician
as having a PhD then I assume its very very few.
If you defining it as majored in math or CS
there would probably be some.

David X. Cohen, co-creator of Futurama, was getting his Ph.D. in theoretical CS at Berkeley, but left around his their year with a Masters to go write for the Simpsons. There's a Harvard Lampoon connection that has led a number of "math geeks" to the Simpsons and other comedy shows (animated and otherwise).

On the physics side of things, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman have always been known for their sense of humor, especially through some notable quotes attributed to them, although they were never formally comedians.

Also for the gamers out there, it's actually interesting to note that among the two original creators of the internet show pure pwnage, one was a former physics phd student and the other was an undergraduate studying math, cs, and physics.

I've met (and drank) with a few of the Simpson's writers. One looks and acts like Crusty the Clown. I can't remember his name, but the margaritas were good. The Mercedes SLR was nice too. Something to think about if you don't get tenure....

The idea that humor and scientific creativity are related was raised by Arthur Koestler in his 1964 book "The Act of Creation". But more important - when I finish my phd., how do I become a Simpson's writer?